Posted
by
timothyon Thursday November 08, 2012 @04:58PM
from the show-us-the-sheets dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Cray has unveiled a XC30 supercomputer capable of high-performance computing workloads of more than 100 petaflops. Originally code-named 'Cascade,' the system relies on Intel Xeon processors and Aries interconnect chipset technology, paired with Cray's integrated software environment. Cray touts the XC30's ability to utilize a wide variety of processor types; future versions of the platform will apparently feature Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia Tesla GPUs based on the Kepler GPU computing architecture. Cray leveraged its work with DARPA's High Productivity Computing Systems program in order to design and build the XC30. Cray's XC30 isn't the only supercomputer aiming for that 100-petaflop crown. China's Guangzhou Supercomputing Center recently announced the development of a Tianhe-2 supercomputer theoretically capable of 100 petaflops, but that system isn't due to launch until 2015. Cray also faces significant competition in the realm of super-computer makers: it only built 5.4 percent of the systems on the Top500 list, compared to IBM with 42.6 percent and Hewlett-Packard with 27.6 percent."

In November, 2001, the fastest supercomputer was 12 TFlops [top500.org]. You can achieve that today for less than $5,000 on your desktop by ganging together four GPGPU cards (such as the 3 TFlops Radeon 7970 for less than $500 each). Go back to 1999 and it's only 3 TFlops and to match today you wouldn't even need a special motherboard.